The Washington Post Refutes Itself on Inequality

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With Bernie Sanders igniting the socialist movement and the “unfair inequality” battlecry, I’m seeing this article and corresponding graph being passed around again:

The cringe-worthy article on the Washington Posts starts like this:
“Poor kids who do everything right don’t do better than rich kids who do everything wrong. America is the land of opportunity, just for some more than others. That’s because, in large part, inequality starts in the crib.”

Never mind that the author makes the highly offensive assumption that simply graduating college equals “doing everything right,” and dropping out of high school is “doing everything wrong.” He presumes that someone who gets a college degree, regardless if the degree is worthwhile, is “doing it right.” He suggests that you’re a rich spoiled brat if you drop out of high school to work on the family farm or in the family restaurant. The former, while not necessarily contributing anything to society, shall be revered, and their failure is solely society’s fault. The latter, regardless how many jobs or how much economic value they create, are “wealthy ne’er-do-wells” (his words) who is undeserving of their wealth, simply because they were born well off.

Never mind the bitter language suggesting a blatant bias against the well off. “Rich high school dropouts remain in the top…these low-income strivers are just as likely to end up in the bottom as these wealthy ne’er-do-wells. Some meritocracy.” Sounds like somebody never got over the fact that his classmate got a BMW for his 16th birthday, while he had to take the big yellow bus.

But the problem is the graph itself. Maybe the author doesn’t know how to read graphs, or maybe he does, but thinks his readers are too stupid to understand. Because from what I can see, the graph completely refutes his claims against upward mobility.

1. I see that “poor college grads” are 143% as likely to reach the top quintile as the “rich dropouts.”

2. I see that “poor college grads” are 216% as likely to reach the top 2 quintiles as the “rich dropouts.”
3. I see that “rich high school dropouts” are 156% as likely to end up in the bottom 2 quintiles as the “poor college grads.”

Considering those odds, I’d say “poor college grads” end up MUCH better than “rich high school dropouts.”

The article goes on to claim stats, facts, and figures claiming that rich kids have all the advantages in life. Including how 70% of Canadian 1 percenters work in the family business. Or how “Affluent parents talk to their kids three more hours a week on average than poor parents, which is critical during a child’s formative early years…rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students.”

I don’t doubt that an extra 3 hours a week of parent-child interaction is critical to a child’s development, but is wealth a requirement for spending time with your kids? I understand those who have to work 2 jobs do not have the same opportunity to spend quality time with their children as compared to housewives and the independently wealthy. But with that logic, someone who is unemployed should be raising genius kids since they get to spend all day with their kids, right? Is the perpetually underemployed REALLY that much busier than the lawyer who works 80 hours a week? Or maybe because they CHOOSE to do something other than spend time with their kids? Or perhaps, like many other “justifications” for disadvantage, it’s merely an excuse.